Karen

If you looked up Mamma's baby in the Martin family dictionary this is the picture that you'd find.

Today, March 7th, is my sister Karen's birthday. I don't really have any words that would do justice to telling you how great she is so I thought I just post some pictures.

I was 10 when she was born so I remember Dad calling home and Henry who was 20 calling up the stairs that we had a little sister.

I think she was 16 when she met Mike.

And considerably older when he finally put a ring on it. Yesterday was their anniversary.

August 14, 2000. Mike called and said: "We have a son. His name is Caleb Andrew and he weighed 10lbs 14 ounces." And yes Karen did that at home.

February 24th, 2003 Emily Abigail arrived in a crashing hurry on a stormy night. These children changed my life. They have been shared with such generosity. They've always had more than enough love to spare.

They are going to have way too many pictures and movies of themselves to choose from for their wedding videos but I'm not sorry. Aunt Camera - that's me.

Caleb called these greetings after karen came home from work "bump hugs."

Karen danced the lines between mommy and Mom with grace and wove them together into a beautiful tapestry.

Mom needed to depend on Karen every bit as much as baby Karen did to her.

And though because of Alzheimer's, as the youngest, Karen missed the beauty of having mom be able to care for her children like all my other siblings, there was nevertheless a special bond.

When Mom broke her hip Emily who was four wanted to write her a letter.

She spent a long time crafting it and I asked her to tell me what she was writing as she worked on it:

Happy birthday Karen, I love you!

Tonight Emily came over while Karen and Mike went out for their anniversary. We had planned that we'd go see the rose sisters together if there was any light.

Emily hasn't seen them in person since they were just three among many others and we didn't know them yet.

You can't really see the roses but they are in there.

When I put my rose sister montage together, (you knew it was coming someday), Emily's going to sing the song and Caleb's going to play it on the guitar.

I don't know what kind of light this is but I like it.

One more with the camera exposure thingy to the right just so I remember which way to turn it :)

Then some fun later with heat mapping.

We did some Rice Krispy sculpting...

(Happy face)

(Camera)

but this batch was too sticky to form well so we moved on to nail art.

Harry's understandably been sleeping off yesterday's cat nipping most of today.

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